The British Museum tried something entirely new with their multimedia exhibition, Babylon: Myth and Reality, which traces the history, legend, and legacy of Babylon from the sixth century BCE to date. The exhibition has a strong focus on Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign but ends powerfully as it explores how the site of Babylon, which is located about 85 kilometres south of present-day Baghdad, has been damaged by the current conflict.
Most exhibits in the British Museum are focused on archeological material but this exhibition contains a lot of art and a good deal of video and audio elements. The main historical exhibition draws on the combined holdings of the British Museum, the musée du Louvre and the Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, and the Tate, emphasising a continuing dialogue between the Babylon of our imagination and the historic evidence for one of the great cities of antiquity at the moment of its climax and eclipse.
For two thousand years the myth of Babylon has haunted the West's imagination. Fabled landmarks or legends such as the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, Belshazzar’s Feast and the Fall of Babylon have inspired artists, writers, poets, philosophers and film makers.
Over the past two hundred years, archaeologists have been trying to piece together the ‘real’ Babylon – an imperial capital, a great centre of science, art and commerce. Since 2003, the allied invasion of Iraq, attention has been drawn to new threats to the archaeology of Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq.
Much of the art on show comes from those historical collections from Europe's key museums. “The art is real art; it is independently famous,” said Irving Finkel, one of the curators of the exhibition. The exhibition attempts to “take a painting that is really well known and to look at it as a piece of archeological evidence,” Finkel said. The exhibition is also interesting in that it mixes contemporary or modern art works in with the archeological artefacts and thus places more pieces next to ancient materials.
With the diversity of items in the exhibition, the curators try to tell a more complete story of Babylon. They tell a tale of the real Babylon but do not ignore the myths about the great city. Instead, the exhibition explores the possibilities of the legends. They are careful to point out the idea that some of these myths, such as the well-known Hanging Gardens have not been proven to be either fact or fiction. The exhibition tells of other gardens that have been uncovered. Archeologists believe that one of these sites could possibly be the site of the Hanging Gardens. As for the Tower of Babel, there is evidence that it did exist but the details are really left up to the imagination. The exhibit highlights biblical quotes that explain the legend surrounding the towers: because men created the Tower of Babel to make a name for themselves, God punished the people by creating different languages so the people of the world could not communicate. The works of art featured in the section of the exhibit that focus on the Tower of Babel all provide very different interpretations of the tower. Still, all share the idea that the tower was comprised of different levels that became smaller and smaller as it got taller and taller.
The Tower of Babel was also a central theme in a different exhibit in the British Museum: Iraq’s Past Speaks to the Present, a collection of contemporary Iraqi art. This section could easily be missed as it is in a tiny, unmarked room in the middle of the collection of Islamic art, but it is extremely worthwhile and should not be ignored.
Walid Siti, a Kurdish Iraqi artist, created a collection of different interpretations of the Tower of Babel made out of simple charcoal and paper in 2001. Keeping the same main cone-like element, he experimented with different shapes for the tower. Many of the artists also refer to the war in Iraq in their paintings, which was also covered in the Babylon exhibition. Suad Al-Attar, the first woman to have an exhibition in Baghdad, was known for her romantic works before 2003, when the war in Iraq began, said Venetia Porter, curator of the collection. In 2004, her style completely changed with a moving and terrifying piece of a screaming woman which hangs in the exhibit.
All of the artists featured in the exhibit have moved out of Iraq. “It is interesting that they chose themes linking them to their ancient past,” Porter said. “Attachment to the land of birth is huge.” Every piece works to tell a story of Iraq’s ancient heritage or of the destruction of this heritage in a contemporary way.
While the contemporary Iraqi art collection rests in a small rectangular room, the Babylon exhibit winds around and around like a river, Finkel said. You truly lose conception of where you began and it is hard to imagine where you will end up. The exhibition is split up into 12 themed sections and begins with a room dedicated to the real Babylon. Finkel was surprised to find that many people really didn’t know if Babylon was a real place or if it was fictional. Thus, this room was meant as a “main starting point to show the visitors that Babylon was a real place,” Finkel said. This room, therefore, is mainly artefact-based and held a couple large remnants of the Processional Way, the entrance to the city leading to the Ishtar Gate. The pieces were painted in vibrant blues and yellows with a relief of a dragon and of a lion, made of glazed brick. In the centre of the room stands a model of the Processional Way and the Ishtar Gate so you can really put the artefacts in context and imagine the avenue as it was in the real Babylon.
The exhibition continues later with an analysis of Nebuchadnezzar’s true character and his invasion of Jerusalem. This section tells the story of how Nebuchadnezzar, a great and respectable leader, gained the reputation of being a wicked and horrible man and how Babylon as a whole became a symbol of wickedness and evil. According to the exhibition, the bad reputation was, over time, transferred from Nabonidus, an earlier king, to Nebuchadnezzar because of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem. The exhibition features ancient inscriptions that detail the invasion of Jerusalem as well as biblical quotations. “It is very interesting that other documents show the same story as in the Bible,” Finkel commented. William Blake’s famous painting, Nebuchadnezzar, presented Nebuchadnezzar as the wild beast that he was condemned to be for seven years.
“Every time you go around the bend, something interesting pops up that you didn’t expect,” Finkel said. With the war occurring today, many Europeans see Iraq as a sort of gloomy place but Iraq has such a rich culture and history, Finkel said. This exhibition aims to “show the other side of Iraq.” The exhibition opened on 13 November 2008 and remains open till 15 March 2009 at the British Museum.
